New exhibition sees Welsh artists explore nature and the built world
Nation.Cymru Staff
A new exhibition bringing together three artists working in sculpture and drawing has opened at a Welsh gallery, exploring the relationship between materials, landscapes and the world around us.
The Angharad Pearce Jones, Simon Gaiger and Stephen West exhibition will run at Cardiff’s Celf Gallery from 17 October to 15 November 2026, placing three distinct but complementary practices in conversation.
Angharad Pearce Jones and Simon Gaiger share a deep engagement with steel, fabrication and structure, while Stephen West introduces the immediacy of drawing, charcoal and mark-making.
She is a chronicler of the curiosities that mark our past and contemporary environment providing ‘impact narratives’ that force us into many lines of enquiry.
For this exhibition Angharad has added two new sculptures to her IMPACT series; exact re-creations in welded steel of real scenes of impact, adding colour and pattern, to elevate them into brand new sculptures.
Sculptor Simon Gaiger works primarily in wood and steel from his studio in Wales, creating furniture and sculpture that explores tension and balance.
His sculptures explore the relationship between the natural and man-made world, often using contrasting shapes and materials to reflect the landscapes and surroundings that inspire him.
Though abstract, the work tracks the tension between landscape, structure and human intervention, informed in part by a fascinating life, a childhood spent in Africa and the Pacific, time as a shipwright’s assistant and engineer.
The third featured artist, Stephen West, began his life in Berkshire before training as a painter at St Martins School of Art alongside his wife, Shani Rhys James.
He has worked from his studio in Wales for over 40 years, developing a practice as both an artist and a regular contributor to public arts curation across Wales.
West’s drawings emerge from both landscape and interior life, moving between direct observation, allegory and imagined narratives.
The works in this exhibition reflect this broad practice, encompassing large-scale charcoal drawings dominated by branching, all-encompassing trees, alongside more intimate observations of gardens and tiled rooftops.
West said: “The images I make on paper or board create an alternate reality, governed by the rules of drawing rather than the laws of nature.
“They draw on activity, gravity and space—whether observed in the real world or encountered in dreams—and seek to give these elements significance within the world of the drawing.”
The Angharad Pearce Jones, Simon Gaiger and Stephen West exhibition opened at Celf Gallery on 17 October and will run until 15 November. For more information, visit the Celf Gallery site here.
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